Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. This is a winter break week for us,
Speaker 1: so we have some vault episodes for you. This is
Speaker 1: going to be part one of our Mystery Cults series
Speaker 1: from last year, Part one of four. It originally published
Speaker 1: two twenty seven, twenty twenty five. What is it about, Well,
Speaker 1: it is a mystery we'll have to experience for yourself.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Now many times on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. When
Speaker 1: discussing religion and the ancient Greco Roman world, we have
Speaker 1: referred to the mystery cults, also known as the sacred
Speaker 1: mysteries or even the mysteries. Watching my stories, we've discussed
Speaker 1: specific mystery cults and a little more depth. But I
Speaker 1: was recently thinking about this and I realized that this
Speaker 1: was a topic that deserved deeper consideration, and indeed, I
Speaker 1: think more than once I've personally kind of left it
Speaker 1: at and this deity was also taken up by the
Speaker 1: mystery cults as if to delve deeper is impossible or
Speaker 1: somehow forbidden. Now, certainly mysteries surrounding the various mystery cults
Speaker 1: remain and much as left open to interpretation, but we
Speaker 1: do know quite a lot whole books have been written
Speaker 1: on the topic, and we're going to follow along in
Speaker 1: these episodes to see what we can learn and share
Speaker 1: about the mysteries.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I am excited to go on a journey
Speaker 3: exploring the mystery cults of the Greco Roman world, But
Speaker 3: I kind of like the way that you used to
Speaker 3: leave it off, you know, just you know, in this
Speaker 3: deity Yes became a focus of the mystery cults and
Speaker 3: saying no more, because that is a tradition going all
Speaker 3: the way back to the ancient world itself. One of
Speaker 3: the main sources we're going to be using in this
Speaker 3: series is a great book called Mystery Cults in the
Speaker 3: Ancient World. They just got a new edition out. I
Speaker 3: think it was originally published over a decade ago, but
Speaker 3: it got a new edition in twenty twenty three by
Speaker 3: an author named Hugh Bowden, who is a professor of
Speaker 3: ancient history at King's College, London. This is a really
Speaker 3: great book. But one of the things you mentioned several
Speaker 3: times is ancient writers bringing up a mystery cult and
Speaker 3: then saying I've been instructed in a dream not to
Speaker 3: say any more about this. My lips are sealed, like
Speaker 3: Paulsenius will be like, then, this really interesting thing happened
Speaker 3: in Samothrace, of which I can tell you nothing, which
Speaker 3: itself makes for a very enticing subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and course runs completely counter to our modern
Speaker 1: understanding of history, like now everything must be revealed, Please
Speaker 1: reveal it to us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything, except when you have met face to face
Speaker 3: the terrifying power of a god or a goddess. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: I know today you wanted wanted to do some work
Speaker 3: laying the groundwork establishing a bit about the historical context
Speaker 3: of broader Greco Roman religion in the ancient Mediterranean world,
Speaker 3: which is the context in which these mystery cults existed.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, I thought it might be
Speaker 3: important just to do a little bit of disambiguation on terminology,
Speaker 3: because if you are coming into an episode called mystery cults,
Speaker 3: and you are bringing the normal connotations of the word
Speaker 3: mystery and cult that modern English speakers would bring with you,
Speaker 3: that might send your mind off in several different wrong
Speaker 3: directions at once.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you were to tell someone I just
Speaker 1: joined a mystery cult today, you might be it might
Speaker 1: be accurate to think, oh, this individual joined a book club,
Speaker 1: or maybe this is a really cool band name. And
Speaker 1: if someone were to join a mystery cult, say in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties, in say the United States,
Speaker 1: well it's going to have different connotations and it might
Speaker 1: read to a certain it might lead to a certain
Speaker 1: amount of panic. But yeah, we have to differentiate a
Speaker 1: mystery cult in its ancient application.
Speaker 3: Here, right, So we need to do work on both
Speaker 3: of those words, actually, on mystery and on cult. So
Speaker 3: in modern English, the word cult is typically used to
Speaker 3: mean a specific type of religious phenomenon, almost always with
Speaker 3: pejorative connotations. So a cult refers to a marginal, extreme
Speaker 3: and usually socially harmful form of religion from the point
Speaker 3: of view of the person choosing this term. So, for example,
Speaker 3: a cult is a religion that has relatively few adherents
Speaker 3: compared to major world religions. Maybe one that enforces strict
Speaker 3: reverence and obedience of a human leader. Maybe a religion
Speaker 3: that requires adherents to cut off contact with loved ones.
Speaker 3: And the rest of the outside world things like that.
Speaker 1: Yes. Indeed, the word cult has often been used by
Speaker 1: more established religious groups against new religious movements, new religious
Speaker 1: movements that could potentially have harmful attributes but may not.
Speaker 1: This was a hallmark, of course, of the Christian countercult
Speaker 1: movement of the late twentieth century, often targeting Christian groups
Speaker 1: held as heretical by larger Christian organizations, which of course
Speaker 1: is a tail almost as old as Christianity itself in
Speaker 1: many respects.
Speaker 3: And in some cases what the Christians were saying about
Speaker 3: those people probably resembled what the Roman Pagans were saying
Speaker 3: about the early Christians. They meet in secret, and they
Speaker 3: eat babies alive and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course all this bleeds over to into
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy. You know, if you play Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: you have probably noticed that I haven't checked in the
Speaker 1: new Monster Manual which just came out. I have a
Speaker 1: copy of it, but I haven't gotten to the cultists yet.
Speaker 1: But generally, cultists are an enemy type in Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: And what do you think of in Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: Within the context of Dungeons and Dragons when you encounter
Speaker 1: a cultist, well, they are just absolute bad guys with
Speaker 1: no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They're just they're villains that you battle.
Speaker 1: They see that another fantasy fiction as well.
Speaker 3: Usually their own proprietary robes and daggers if you loot them.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah. If you get a mini of a cultist,
Speaker 1: what do you expect to see? A robe and a dagger.
Speaker 1: Those are the.
Speaker 3: Hallmarks, right, So that's what cult usually means in English
Speaker 3: today in general usage. And then of course you get
Speaker 3: the derivative term, you know, like cult films and stuff
Speaker 3: that are more ironic usages stemming from that usage. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But in the context of Greco Roman history, the word
Speaker 3: cult does not have any of those connotations. It doesn't
Speaker 3: have any negative implications. It does not imply a marginal
Speaker 3: or unusual practice either. There were cults of the mainstream
Speaker 3: gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, so you'd have
Speaker 3: the local cult of Apollo, the local cult of Jupiter,
Speaker 3: the cult of Dionysus, et cetera. So when used by
Speaker 3: ancient historians, you can think of the word cult as
Speaker 3: basically just a synonym for the word worship or system
Speaker 3: of worship. So the cult of Apollo in a particular
Speaker 3: time and place in the Hellenic world would be the
Speaker 3: system of beliefs, practices, and social structures under which Apollo
Speaker 3: was worshiped. In fact, there's a bit of interesting etymology here.
Speaker 3: The English word cult is derived through several steps, originally
Speaker 3: from the Latin cultus, which often literally means worship, but
Speaker 3: also means care in the sense of taking care of
Speaker 3: something or tending to the needs of something. So, for example,
Speaker 3: agriculture is tending to the needs of the fields. To
Speaker 3: cultivate means to till a field and preparation for planting.
Speaker 3: So the cult of a particular god is the way
Speaker 3: of tending to the needs of that God in the
Speaker 3: form of worship, prayer, festivals, rituals, and sacrifices, the latter
Speaker 3: of which could take many forms, often agricultural products like
Speaker 3: grain or the meat of livestock, or could have other forms,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a monetary donation purchasing one of the
Speaker 3: aforementioned products, or things like incense or wine.
Speaker 1: So when we think of something like the cult of Cthulhu,
Speaker 1: we're just talking about taking care of Cthulhu. Yes, looking
Speaker 1: after Cthulhu, tending to the needs of Cthulhu, which sounds
Speaker 1: far less frightening and threatening.
Speaker 3: That's true, it's a beautiful thing. And in fact, this
Speaker 3: highlights something about Greek and Roman pagan religion that is
Speaker 3: unfamiliar to practitioners of many the major world religions today,
Speaker 3: people who are primarily familiar with religion through you know,
Speaker 3: Christianity or Islam or Judaism. The most common form of
Speaker 3: public religion in the Greek and Roman world was essentially
Speaker 3: a transactional quid pro quo relationship between the person or
Speaker 3: the local community and a god. So the person and
Speaker 3: the community at large performed rituals and sacrifices in honor
Speaker 3: of the God, and in return, the God was expected
Speaker 3: to provide blessings to the person. So it was generally
Speaker 3: understood that, you know, the gods would have power over
Speaker 3: events that were beyond human control. They can maybe control how,
Speaker 3: you know, the weather and agricultural outcomes and diseases and
Speaker 3: things like that, and so in order to get the
Speaker 3: God to you know, treat you nice as far as
Speaker 3: those things beyond you and control wind, the thing you
Speaker 3: would do is take care of the God. You would
Speaker 3: honor their festivals, you would make sacrifices to them, you
Speaker 3: would do prayers for them, And in that sense, you
Speaker 3: can really look at it as kind of a contract.
Speaker 3: There's a bargain. We do things for you, you do things
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the agriculture comparison is quite apt here
Speaker 1: to think of it almost as like a knowledge of
Speaker 1: the unseen world that then you of course have to honor. Like, okay,
Speaker 1: we've discovered this. We are aware of this relationship between
Speaker 1: these entities we cannot see, but who are quite powerful
Speaker 1: over human affairs, and of course we have to cultivate
Speaker 1: this relationship. We have to make sure that they're happy
Speaker 1: so we can be happy. This is how the world.
Speaker 3: Works, right, and this is the main way religion is
Speaker 3: understood among the ancient Greeks and Romans. That way of
Speaker 3: approaching religion is fundamentally different from the major religion of
Speaker 3: the world today, like Christianity and Islam, which place emphasis
Speaker 3: on belief and on a form of mental submission to God.
Speaker 3: Mainstream Greek and Roman religion was really there was not
Speaker 3: a lot of discourse about what you believed or like,
Speaker 3: you know, did you mentally internally honor and love God?
Speaker 3: That that was just not really a common way of
Speaker 3: approaching it for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Instead, it
Speaker 3: was did you do the rituals, did you do the prayers?
Speaker 3: Did you make the sacrifices, did you celebrate the festivals?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? Do you know what the gods want? And
Speaker 1: generally what the gods want are those rituals, are those
Speaker 1: sacrifices and so forth. It's more transactional.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about another difference that came to mind
Speaker 3: for me as I was reading this Abouden book that
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about in the series. I
Speaker 3: can really only speak to my intimate familiarity with Christianity
Speaker 3: here in America today. But I think a lot of
Speaker 3: modern Christians, at least in the United States, would today
Speaker 3: say that God does not need our worship, like he
Speaker 3: is not left wanting if deprived of it. Rather, I
Speaker 3: think most would say that say something like, we worship
Speaker 3: God because it is right to do so, that God
Speaker 3: is by nature deserving of worship, and so we his
Speaker 3: followers are simply acknowledging that. I don't get that impression
Speaker 3: about Greco Roman pagans. I don't get the feeling they
Speaker 3: would have thought of it this way, the worship and
Speaker 3: sacrifices that Greco Roman pagans seem to have given the
Speaker 3: gods were things that the gods wanted and in fact needed.
Speaker 3: And one piece of evidence for this occurred to me
Speaker 3: when I was reading Bowden's recounting of the myth of
Speaker 3: Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone has stolen a way
Speaker 3: to the underworld, Demeter is left distraw looking for her.
Speaker 3: Eventually she can return back to the upper world for
Speaker 3: part of the year, but it has to return to
Speaker 3: the underworld for another part of the year, and this
Speaker 3: ends up relating to understandings of seasonal cycles. But anyway,
Speaker 3: this myth is related to one of the most important
Speaker 3: mystery cults in the ancient Mediterranean, the Elusinian Mysteries. More
Speaker 3: on that later, but there is a part of the
Speaker 3: myth where Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertile fields and
Speaker 3: the harvest, is mourning the kidnapping of her daughter into
Speaker 3: the underworld, and she uses her power over the fields
Speaker 3: to stop grain from growing over the earth. And it
Speaker 3: turns out, at least within a common telling of this tale,
Speaker 3: in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this is alarming not
Speaker 3: only to humans who need to eat the grain. You know,
Speaker 3: that's going to cause famine on earth, but it's also
Speaker 3: alarming to the gods, because the gods need to receive
Speaker 3: grain sacrifices from humans, and so Zeus is motivated to
Speaker 3: do something to fix the situation. And that struck me
Speaker 3: as very alien to the most common ways of thinking
Speaker 3: about God that I encounter, at least as the you know,
Speaker 3: twenty first century American. It seems to me that that
Speaker 3: to the Greco Roman pagans, not only was the worship
Speaker 3: of the god's transactional. The gods were not just taking
Speaker 3: pity on us or doing us a favor by engaging
Speaker 3: in this deal making. They needed, or at least very
Speaker 3: much wanted, what we were bringing to the table.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, very different from the idea of well, God
Speaker 1: created you, God wants your love, and you are loved
Speaker 1: by God and therefore like invited into his arms. No,
Speaker 1: this is more we need that grain, like there's a
Speaker 1: there's an economy here and it needs to be maintained.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So anyway, I guess we got into
Speaker 3: some digressions there. But that's why the word cult should
Speaker 3: not mislead you there. We're not talking about the you know,
Speaker 3: the the cultists of dungeons and dragons. It just means
Speaker 3: a form of wor worship as understood within the ancient Mediterranean. Now,
Speaker 3: the other word in a mystery cult is mystery. This
Speaker 3: is an interesting case too. In common usage today, mystery
Speaker 3: refers to a sort of puzzle with a hidden solution.
Speaker 3: So a mystery story is one where the plot is
Speaker 3: propelled by your desire to have a question answered. There
Speaker 3: may be a there may be a hidden solution, or
Speaker 3: there may be no known solution at all. Sometimes a
Speaker 3: mystery refers to a thing that a question that cannot
Speaker 3: be answered. Russies yes, So this could imply that a
Speaker 3: mystery cult is a form of worship where the main
Speaker 3: goal is to solve some kind of information puzzle, to
Speaker 3: answer a question, or to access a piece of hidden in.
Speaker 3: That's not primarily what's going on with mystery cults. While
Speaker 3: the Greco Roman mystery cults absolutely did have elements of
Speaker 3: secrecy and privileged information, and we'll get into more of
Speaker 3: that later as well, the main sense in which the
Speaker 3: word mystery is used in mystery cults is to refer
Speaker 3: not to an information puzzle, but to a specific type
Speaker 3: of secret initiation ritual known in Greek as mysteria, which
Speaker 3: somewhat overlaps with other Greek concepts of orgea and teleti.
Speaker 3: A Bowden mentions these three concepts altogether. They seem to
Speaker 3: sometimes be used interchangeably, or maybe to refer to related
Speaker 3: but slightly different things orgea and teleti. He translates as
Speaker 3: mystic rites and initiations. So what are the mysteries? The
Speaker 3: mysteries are these initiation rites, and they could indeed be
Speaker 3: described as in many ways mysterious. They were often held
Speaker 3: at night, They were often conducted in secret, so they
Speaker 3: might take place inside a kind of a protected building
Speaker 3: outside of public view. So in the case of the
Speaker 3: Elusinian mysteries, which we'll describe in more detail later, I'm
Speaker 3: sure there would be a kind of publicly viewable part
Speaker 3: of this festival that would take place outside people would
Speaker 3: be able to see it going on, But eventually the
Speaker 3: festival would progress into an enclosed area inside a kind
Speaker 3: of temple complex, where things would happen inside and those
Speaker 3: not initiated into the secret rights would not be able
Speaker 3: to know what was going on. Sometimes these rights would
Speaker 3: also be mysterious in the sense that participants might be
Speaker 3: blindfolded or hooded so that they couldn't see or understand
Speaker 3: what was happening. And the rights were often just made
Speaker 3: up of weird, baffling, frightening, emotionally intense experiences and encounters
Speaker 3: with the power of the gods. So there are absolutely
Speaker 3: things about these rights that we might think of as mysterious,
Speaker 3: and the mystery cults did absolutely have secrets. But the
Speaker 3: mystery in the name refers to these rights, refers to
Speaker 3: the strange, powerful, obscure rights of initiation, not so much
Speaker 3: to an information puzzle mystery in the Sherlock Holmes sense.
Speaker 3: If that distinction makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I want to add an additional
Speaker 1: note on the term that you mentioned already, orgia. This
Speaker 1: term is of course used in the context of religious
Speaker 1: rights in ancient Greece, and while orgia might entail sexuality,
Speaker 1: it does not inherently entail sexuality. I was reading a
Speaker 1: bit about this in a really nice twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: piece in The Conversation by Christian George Schwinzel. This is
Speaker 1: a historian, a French historian of the ancient world, and
Speaker 1: he writes about this, and he points out that the
Speaker 1: term that we in common usage today org orgy in English,
Speaker 1: didn't come to mean group sexual activity and excessive food
Speaker 1: and drink till after eighteen hundred CE, especially during the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and especially in French literature of the time. Schwinzel, however,
Speaker 1: stresses that this doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks and
Speaker 1: Romans didn't engage in such activities. They certainly did, they
Speaker 1: just referred to them by different names. Schwenzel, who is
Speaker 1: again himself French, wrote an entire book on the subject.
Speaker 3: It's funny how this is one of these terms that
Speaker 3: has come around kind of like cult in a way,
Speaker 3: where I use the word orgy all the time, not
Speaker 3: to refer to anything sexual. I just mean like a
Speaker 3: sort of an excessive indulgence in something.
Speaker 1: Right right well, And in fact, he gets into this
Speaker 1: a little bit like bringing up the film Babylon for
Speaker 1: the kind of thing came out that same year, which
Speaker 1: is like a Hollywood Babylon sort of thing, and he
Speaker 1: points out that some of the that the movie does
Speaker 1: contain a fictional depiction of a Hollywood orgy in the
Speaker 1: in the modern sense, but then one might say, well,
Speaker 1: this movie is an orgy for the senses in the
Speaker 1: metaphorical sense. But again, when you get back to the
Speaker 1: use of the of the term or gea, it does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean any kind of sexual activity was going on.
Speaker 1: It could, but it doesn't inherently mean that. So it's
Speaker 1: just another important footnote about the usage of the usages
Speaker 1: of the term. The French literature example, you do see
Speaker 1: works of that in Daring that time period that are
Speaker 1: portraying the ancient world as engaging in these sorts of
Speaker 1: rights that putting more of a you know, an erotic
Speaker 1: sexual spin on the right.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of an adaptation. But even in the
Speaker 3: original Greek understanding that we were just talking about, as
Speaker 3: explained by Bowden, there is the idea that the orgea
Speaker 3: or orgea, these mystic rights would have been probably extremely
Speaker 3: emotionally intense and overwhelming to the senses. Ancient writers who
Speaker 3: do even if they don't describe what the rights themselves were,
Speaker 3: they often describe the effect of them, which is that
Speaker 3: they are life changing, an overwhelming experience that leaves one
Speaker 3: deeply shaken to the core.
Speaker 1: Exactly Now, again, that book by Hugh Bowden has been
Speaker 1: one of our key resources here, and Bowden does a
Speaker 1: great job as a great approach to the topic, grounding
Speaker 1: his initial approach in a discussion of what we might
Speaker 1: refer to as this the mainstream religious ecosystem of the
Speaker 1: ancient Greco Roman world, and then diving into where the
Speaker 1: mystery cults fit in and how they generally differed. And
Speaker 1: we've already been engaging with some of this. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to exit our modern understanding of organized, top
Speaker 1: down religion and get into a different ecosystem, a different
Speaker 1: way that things worked in order to understand then how
Speaker 1: the mystery cults are sort of set aside even from that,
Speaker 1: So we're we're largely dealing with the world before Christianity
Speaker 1: and set apart from its key characteristics, namely, you know,
Speaker 1: any notion of a centrally organized doctrinal religion. So first up,
Speaker 1: this is this probably seems like an outrageous overstatement of
Speaker 1: the obvious, but there were a lot of gods, yes,
Speaker 1: and by that we don't just mean the standard twelve
Speaker 1: Olympians set menu that instantly comes to mind. You know,
Speaker 1: you know your your Zeus, your Apollo, and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know your your main Greek gods, the ones that
Speaker 1: you're going to see in a poster. They're the ones
Speaker 1: that are frequently utilized in Greek mythology themed works of fiction. No,
Speaker 1: I would say, instead, think of an exhaustive cheesecake factory
Speaker 1: style menu, one that makes you question whether the kitchen
Speaker 1: can truly deliver on all of these diverse menu items.
Speaker 1: Only even that is not a perfect technology, because the
Speaker 1: cheesecake factory is, as I understand it, centrally organized. The
Speaker 1: idea is that any cheesecake factory you go to is
Speaker 1: going to have the same exhaustive menu, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to think of a better analogy,
Speaker 3: because so you had lots of different gods, and then
Speaker 3: you had local versions of all these gods, so almost
Speaker 3: more like how you got McDonald's. But the local McDonald's
Speaker 3: is a franchise, you know. But that's a little misleading too,
Speaker 3: because there's top down control like McDonald's corporates, that's rules
Speaker 3: about what franchise owners can do. So, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You imagine you've got your basic list of gods, then
Speaker 3: you've got a lot of other lesser known gods, and
Speaker 3: then you've also got the local ways or the local
Speaker 3: cult of each of the main gods that are going
Speaker 3: to be different than how that god is appreciated and
Speaker 3: understood in a different place.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, any given community or city states, city state
Speaker 1: is going to have its own caste of deities. They
Speaker 1: determine the course of people's lives. Individual cult practices are
Speaker 1: going to vary widely across the inherently fractured populations, a
Speaker 1: variety that was at times due to actual independence, such
Speaker 1: as in the post Alexander period where you had a
Speaker 1: very formerly united and now fractured empire, or during Roman rule,
Speaker 1: where you know, everything is is wrapped up under Roman rule,
Speaker 1: but with local religious customs largely left alone. As long
Speaker 1: as they're not interfering with what the Romans are doing, fine,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do whatever you were doing beforehand. So
Speaker 1: you know, as an example, in ancient Greece, you'd likely
Speaker 1: find the major Olympian gods, you know, the Big Twelve
Speaker 1: anywhere you went, as well as the various underworld deities,
Speaker 1: although there again might be regional differences in the way
Speaker 1: any of these are treated. But then you'd also have
Speaker 1: lesser nature deities and especially body of water specific nymphs
Speaker 1: and the like that we depend on where you were.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're inherently localized. And then you would
Speaker 1: also have foreign imported gods that were worshiped locally, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, likely with some sort of localized spin as well.
Speaker 1: So I hope I don't sound insensitive by continuing to
Speaker 1: compare all this to food, but it feels like one
Speaker 1: of the better ways to compare it to the modern
Speaker 1: world is to think of all the restaurants in your
Speaker 1: given location. Uh, some very widespread, but perhaps localized to
Speaker 1: some degree, highly localized because cuisines as well, you know
Speaker 1: whatever that you know, the weird local spin on pizza
Speaker 1: happens to be in your city, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and then also put a bubble gum on it, and
Speaker 1: then also imports from from other areas that are again
Speaker 1: likely localized to some degree as well. Now there's here
Speaker 1: another great question that about explorers early on in the book,
Speaker 1: and that is where did these gods come from? And
Speaker 1: of course this is a huge question, but he does
Speaker 1: a great job addressing it in brief, you know, for
Speaker 1: the purposes of this work, because naturally one can go
Speaker 1: in all manner of exhaustive skeptical rationales for the emergence
Speaker 1: of belief in gods and human beings, as well as
Speaker 1: more than a few fringe theories leading up to just
Speaker 1: belief in their pre existence. You know, you just can
Speaker 1: go all the way and say, well, zeus is real.
Speaker 1: That's all there is to it. I'm reminded of the
Speaker 1: in sort of looking at the spectrum of different ways
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. Though, I'm reminded of that famous
Speaker 1: Foltaire quote, which I'll adjust for our purposes here. If
Speaker 1: gods did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
Speaker 1: And as Balden explains, the gods did prove necessary to
Speaker 1: our ancestors, though they were not created wholesale by spiritual
Speaker 1: leaders or religious committees or anything like that. There't nobody
Speaker 1: said well, we need some sort of invisible figure to
Speaker 1: serve this purpose in our culture or life. Now, again,
Speaker 1: that may seem like an overstatement of the obvious, but
Speaker 1: I think it's important to sort of draw that out.
Speaker 1: So rather, the gods emerged out of a variety of
Speaker 1: factors in human evolution and cognition, including Balden points out,
Speaker 1: our predisposition to have strong reactions to the potential presence
Speaker 1: of a predator or a corpse. In this, I was
Speaker 1: reminded of one of the great quotes from Cork McCarthy's
Speaker 1: The Crossing, where he writes, deep in each man is
Speaker 1: the knowledge that something knows of his existence, something knows
Speaker 1: and cannot be fled nor hid from, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a fancy way of saying it feels like something's
Speaker 1: watching you. What is watching you might be a god
Speaker 1: who knows. And indeed, Balden brings up the ancient tradition
Speaker 1: of the evil Eye in this, which I hadn't quite
Speaker 1: thought of as a predatory presence before, but that's pretty
Speaker 1: dead on. You can think of the evil eye roughly
Speaker 1: as an invisible supernatural entity. You see some ancient traditions
Speaker 1: regarding the evil Eye from, you know, especially throughout the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean world. Jewish superstition in particular holds that it lurks
Speaker 1: in the world at large, ready to afflict individuals with
Speaker 1: malign force if provoked, and it's particularly provoked by good luck,
Speaker 1: by boasting and so forth. So if such an entity
Speaker 1: is watching you, then what else is watching you? And
Speaker 1: in fact, we've discussed this on the show. Before you
Speaker 1: get into traditions like the Hamsa. This is like a
Speaker 1: hand eye symbol toward off the evil eye. You get
Speaker 1: into Gorgonian traditions, you know, some sort of terrifying head
Speaker 1: to scare away evil. And sometimes things like the Haamsa
Speaker 1: are also connected to the idea of independent supernatural entities.
Speaker 1: So you're potentially using one unseen entity against another in
Speaker 1: order to protect yourself.
Speaker 3: Right the way you might use the demon Pazuzu to
Speaker 3: protect yourself against Lamashetu or something like that.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we discussed that at length back in October,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to you have to connect these ideas
Speaker 1: like these, at least in part, like the rough forms
Speaker 1: that would be fleshed out into these traditions of deities
Speaker 1: might be in some way connected to just our hardwired
Speaker 1: nature to be on the lookout for things that are
Speaker 1: watching us and might not you know, might might wish
Speaker 1: us no harm, but also might be hungry.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the kind of thing where, of course,
Speaker 3: it's impossible to know for sure where our original where
Speaker 3: our religious impulses originally come from. We can only come
Speaker 3: up with more or less plausible stories about how we
Speaker 3: think it may have happened. I find that the kind
Speaker 3: of predator consciousness agent detection theory is a fairly strong
Speaker 3: candidate in my view. It seems pretty plausible to me.
Speaker 1: Right right, you know, at least for some of like
Speaker 1: the initial broad strokes. But obviously you end up having
Speaker 1: a lot of additional cultural influences and just basic human
Speaker 1: needs that get woven into that, things like you know,
Speaker 1: veneration of ancestors and personal loss. I mean, the list
Speaker 1: goes on and on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like the way religions develop. It's
Speaker 3: like chess games, you know, It's like they can all
Speaker 3: start off kind of similar and then branch off into
Speaker 3: everything is a unique game in the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the gods about and stresses are invisible and
Speaker 1: for the most part unheard. At least, they're not heard
Speaker 1: through their voices at least by most people, but rather
Speaker 1: through their actions. But unless these actions actually occur inside
Speaker 1: a temple devoted to a particular god, it's left up
Speaker 1: to our interpretation which deity spoke and what they were
Speaker 1: trying to say, And that interpretation was often a state duty.
Speaker 1: Various forms of divination were employed to see what the
Speaker 1: gods wanted. Rather again, distinct from simply putting one's faith
Speaker 1: or trust in a deity, but rather figuring out what
Speaker 1: they want. And again, what they generally want is appeasement
Speaker 1: the rights and sacrifices.
Speaker 3: Now we've already alluded to the fact that a lot
Speaker 3: of these sacrifices were agricultural products, but they could take
Speaker 3: a lot of forms.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, he brings up treasure from conquest. You know,
Speaker 1: we just got this bunch of gold in and it
Speaker 1: seems me prisoners, Yeah, in me prison, it seems right
Speaker 1: to give you some of this gods. Also, how about
Speaker 1: some meat and the smoke from the burning fat. This
Speaker 1: of course is another hallmark of you know, of offerings
Speaker 1: to the gods. But I found it really interesting what
Speaker 1: he brings up here, pointing out that bone was often
Speaker 1: part of the sacrifice that was given to the gods,
Speaker 1: bone being long lasting, bone being you know, under in
Speaker 1: a certain way for our here eternal. So you offer
Speaker 1: the bones up to the eternal gods. While the meat
Speaker 1: off the bones, well that's not going to last in
Speaker 1: neither a week, and so that's why we will feast
Speaker 1: on that, and we will offer the bones to the gods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you'd have a common way of dividing up
Speaker 3: the animal sacrifice so that, yeah, the humans eat the
Speaker 3: meat and the bones and the fat are burned for
Speaker 3: the gods. And one way bout in frames this, which
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting, is it's kind of a way
Speaker 3: for the humans and the gods to enjoy a meal together.
Speaker 3: It's a shared festival. So we get the meat and
Speaker 3: the gods get to enjoy the smoke rising up from
Speaker 3: the burned bones and fat, and the organs that smoke
Speaker 3: is rising up into the air where it will be
Speaker 3: enjoyed by the gods. And this point of view, by
Speaker 3: the way, is not unique to Greek and Roman paganism.
Speaker 3: You find this, for example, in the Hebrew Bible. There
Speaker 3: are multiple passages in the books of I think Exodus
Speaker 3: and Leviticus that talk about the burnt offering being a
Speaker 3: pleasing aroma to the Lord rises up and God enjoys
Speaker 3: the smell.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I also really like the way about and
Speaker 1: discuss this here. The idea that when these rights were held,
Speaker 1: the gods were invited and present, they were enjoying the
Speaker 1: food alongside us and other festivities as well, like the
Speaker 1: gods were present there. And of course I guess it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that you see echoes of this, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout other organized religions, like even today, in like modern
Speaker 1: Christian churches, you may hear some form of like well,
Speaker 1: when you know, when we gather together and worship God,
Speaker 1: God is present, at least in a spiritual.
Speaker 3: Sense, right, Yeah, that's right, though I do get the
Speaker 3: feeling there's a difference in that a lot of Christians today,
Speaker 3: I would say, probably feel they enjoy a more intimate
Speaker 3: connection with God as a person. Then you get from
Speaker 3: the idea of at least the public transactional forms of
Speaker 3: Greco Roman paganism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's also worth noting that in
Speaker 1: like a lot of modern Christian traditions is the idea
Speaker 1: that like God is always with you, He's always there
Speaker 1: watching what you're doing. You can always speak to him,
Speaker 1: even if you don't necessarily hear him speak back to you.
Speaker 1: And it's and to put that, at least some of
Speaker 1: the ways it's described in other monotheistic religions, is it
Speaker 1: like God is closer than your own breath, but another place,
Speaker 1: And this is perhaps an interesting example. And then it's
Speaker 1: drawing on you know, so called pagan religions and its
Speaker 1: fictional treatment. You get into these accusations of the witch's Sabbath,
Speaker 1: where witches are gathering together and having their big festival,
Speaker 1: and then who shows up, Oh, it's the hornet goat himself.
Speaker 1: It's Satan who appears physically, which you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like matches up to a limited degree with some of
Speaker 1: these ancient Greco Roman ideas that when you celebrate the God,
Speaker 1: when you make offerings to the gods, the gods may appear.
Speaker 3: Though in the public festival. I mean, Bowden very much
Speaker 3: makes the point that in his view, in the public festivals,
Speaker 3: that appearance would be indirect like that it would just
Speaker 3: be the understanding there would be like a cult statue
Speaker 3: of the God there, and there would be the understanding
Speaker 3: that by making the sacrifice, you're kind of sharing a
Speaker 3: meal with the gods. But it's very much at least
Speaker 3: as as this book argues, very much not the feeling
Speaker 3: with the public religions, the transactional ones, that God's presence
Speaker 3: is felt intimately, because that's kind of the difference that
Speaker 3: makes the mystery cults so appealing. That's when you actually
Speaker 3: have what feels like a more direct encounter with the
Speaker 3: presence of the God.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is this is This is a really good
Speaker 1: distinction to make. Yes, So the modern Christian Church example,
Speaker 1: a God is spiritually present, the totally made up, which
Speaker 1: is Sabbath example, the divine or infernal force is physically present.
Speaker 1: And in the Greco Roman examples we're discussing here, according
Speaker 1: to Bowden, the gods are still very much invisible. We
Speaker 1: don't see them, we don't hear them. But again, their
Speaker 1: presence is known not by anything they're doing, you know,
Speaker 1: they're at the festivities, but what they are doing in
Speaker 1: the world at large that affects humans, like causing natural
Speaker 1: disasters and so forth, affecting the crops and so forth.
Speaker 3: Or communicating through divination maybe exactly. You know, Apollo might
Speaker 3: communicate through his priestess at Delphi or something. But yeah,
Speaker 3: like you said, largely in affecting the outcomes of events
Speaker 3: beyond our control.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they were invisible, but that doesn't mean they
Speaker 1: were absent. They were thought to be very present in
Speaker 1: human affairs, and it came when it came time to
Speaker 1: engage in these special feats and sacrifices. They were understood
Speaker 1: to be present, but were invisible and yeah, and when
Speaker 1: I say they're present, though, we should also point out
Speaker 1: there would be likenesses as well, so there would be statues,
Speaker 1: idols and whatnot carry through the streets or situated within
Speaker 1: a temple. At any rate, these various cults, as we've
Speaker 1: been discussing, engaged in activities that were concerned with maintaining
Speaker 1: proper relations with the gods and about and indicates you
Speaker 1: can roughly divide such rights into two modes of religiosity,
Speaker 1: imagistic and doctrinal. So the doctrinal is more like regular
Speaker 1: low key maintenance. So you know, you bring your car in,
Speaker 1: you know, every for so many miles whatever the sticker
Speaker 1: tells you. It's generally what you know, a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time or certain amount of miles, bring it in,
Speaker 1: get some low key maintenance, and that's all you really
Speaker 1: need to do. And you can also compare this, he
Speaker 1: points out to modern weekly Christian religious services. You know,
Speaker 1: like you're going to go. It's not going to necessarily
Speaker 1: knock your socks off, but it's you know about regularly
Speaker 1: engaging in the top down information and rights and value
Speaker 1: use of a given religion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he describes the doctrinal approach to religion as one
Speaker 3: in which the rituals are frequent, low intensity, and usually
Speaker 3: also they have the element of being semantically clear, like
Speaker 3: their meaning is well explained and commonly understood.
Speaker 1: Right, And he points out that some of the various
Speaker 1: ancient examples of like the city states carrying out rituals
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, these might fall under that classification,
Speaker 1: and I was also wondering, well, maybe it would. Also
Speaker 1: you could also throw in like minor acts of household
Speaker 1: or personal protective right, though I guess that would violate
Speaker 1: the general top down organization model involved with the doctrinal.
Speaker 1: Now coming back to the imagistic, this is more important
Speaker 1: to our discussion of mystery cults. This is the infrequent, intense,
Speaker 1: and often nonverbal. It is a high key experience engaging
Speaker 1: about points out episodic or flash buld memory rather than
Speaker 1: semantic memory. So we're talking high levels of arousal, an
Speaker 1: experience a roller coaster ride. And while this latter classification
Speaker 1: is not unique to the nature of mystery cults, it
Speaker 1: does seem to be a defining factor as we'll be exploring.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about engaging in a just jaw dropping
Speaker 1: experience of the gods and or the unseen world of
Speaker 1: these ancient religions.
Speaker 3: Right, So, under this system of classification, the imagistic is
Speaker 3: something that happens rarely, is extremely emotionally intense and powerful,
Speaker 3: leaves a lasting memory, and often is not clearly explained,
Speaker 3: and is left for the person experiencing it to figure
Speaker 3: out what it means by themselves exactly. Now, one of
Speaker 3: the things that's interesting in the book when he brings
Speaker 3: up these concepts of these concepts from the anthropology of religion,
Speaker 3: doctrinal religions versus imagistic ones, is that they seem to
Speaker 3: often arise in different systems of social organization. That doctrinal
Speaker 3: religions are more common in large, large social groupings, maybe
Speaker 3: in say cities or towns, you know, places where there
Speaker 3: are lots of people gathered together, and places that tend
Speaker 3: to be more socially hierarchical, where you've got levels of authority,
Speaker 3: whereas more often we find imagistic forms of religion in
Speaker 3: people that live in smaller groups, smaller social systems of
Speaker 3: organization that are less hierarchical, more egalitarian. And one can
Speaker 3: kind of think of reasons that may be the case,
Speaker 3: Like it just occurred to me that you know, in
Speaker 3: smaller societies with less hierarchy, you know, you say you're
Speaker 3: living in a tribe of you know, a few dozen
Speaker 3: people instead of in a big city full of strangers,
Speaker 3: a lot more of your existence is probably governed by
Speaker 3: individual relationships between people, and that might affect like how
Speaker 3: the meaning of experience needs to be managed. There's maybe
Speaker 3: a lot more room for ambiguity and trying to understand
Speaker 3: the uh, you know, what life means? What was the
Speaker 3: meaning of a powerful emotional experience you had that has
Speaker 3: something to do with your role in this society and
Speaker 3: and you're you know, attaining of age within it and
Speaker 3: things like that, versus in a big culture, like say
Speaker 3: you live in a city state with a lot of
Speaker 3: strangers around. There is a lot less social trust and
Speaker 3: a lot less based on individual relationships that will be
Speaker 3: maintained over time. You're going to be doing economic transactions
Speaker 3: with strangers and things like that, and thus you really
Speaker 3: might need you might get more comfort from the idea
Speaker 3: of a system of clearly explained rules. You know, does
Speaker 3: that make sense? Like that you want to kind of
Speaker 3: legal doctrine there where things are explained and you don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about not understanding what the religious experience
Speaker 3: means anyway. So there's that kind of distinction about where
Speaker 3: you find these different modes of religion most often. But
Speaker 3: it's not a strict rule here because clearly one of
Speaker 3: the things that's going to come up in this book
Speaker 3: is that while you've got these public forms of ancient
Speaker 3: cults in the Greco Roman world that are you know,
Speaker 3: you can argue about which category they fit better in,
Speaker 3: but they probably fit better into the doctrinal version. You know,
Speaker 3: they're more about kind of clearly explained relationships. They're more
Speaker 3: kind of low intensity than high intensity. So you've got
Speaker 3: those going on in the ancient city states. But then
Speaker 3: you also have this parallel form of religion, which are
Speaker 3: the mystery cults, which I think you can very much
Speaker 3: argue are more like the imagistic religions. They are based
Speaker 3: on these rights that are powerful, extreme emotional experiences that
Speaker 3: people not only are not allowed to fully explain to
Speaker 3: people who have not been initiated, they probably, as Bouten argues,
Speaker 3: could not explain lane if they tried. So you've essentially
Speaker 3: got both forms within the same general culture, within the
Speaker 3: same time and place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, so, yeah, this is the basic concept of
Speaker 1: the mystery cult. This is the religious ecosystem in which
Speaker 1: you will find it. And uh yeah, in the following
Speaker 1: episode or episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, we're
Speaker 1: gonna dig in a little deeper and look at some
Speaker 1: of these specific examples of mystery cults. What we think
Speaker 1: they were up to, what is what is written and known,
Speaker 1: what is presumed? Uh, it should be a fun ride,
Speaker 1: a high intensity ride. Oh no, it'll be lowkey.
Speaker 3: It'll be low key, I'm kidding, but hopefully of high interest, yes,
Speaker 3: low key of high interest, yes, But we're not going
Speaker 3: to subject to you to like blindfolded beatings and ritual
Speaker 3: mockery and things like that like you might get on
Speaker 3: the on the way to the Lusinian mystery yeah, or
Speaker 3: on other podcasts, other podcasts, maybe end of that, but
Speaker 3: that's not really our vibe here.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope that you'll join us in
Speaker 1: those subsequent episodes. The next one should come out the
Speaker 1: following Tuesday. In the meantime, though, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you if you have any feedback, personal experience and
Speaker 1: so forth regarding what we've talked about already. Right in
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. A reminder of the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays we do a short form episode and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you
Speaker 1: want to follow us on social media, well, we're on
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Speaker 1: And if you use letterboxed and you want to keep
Speaker 1: up with Weird House Cinema, we're Weird House on there.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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